You're now bald, what to do?

I guess during this topic of head coverings I'm about to reveal the many looks of myself. I'm not particularly self centered but I feel in many ways this post needs a lot of picture examples and I would rather use my own photos than borrow from other spots. This blog is by a cancer fighter for cancer fighters or anyone who is trying to learn more about cancer patients and issues they face from a personal experience. I am in no way a taught expert I just write about what cancer has taught me and the options and routes that I have taken to get to the point I am now.

Last week I wrote about hair loss and I consider hair loss a three part subject because you first have the hair loss, then you have the many options of what to do with the bald head and third you have the new growth and how/when will the hair grow back. If I put that all in one blog post it would be huge so I chose to keep them as their own blogs.

So now that your head looks very similar to these two pictures you may be very self conscious and that is understandable, also depending on where you live you need to have something on your head especially when outside to protect your freshly bare scalp from the sun. Everyone is different in their favorite approach and head coverings that they use I'm just going to give an overview of the ones I preferred and really used.

I found my favorite option of a head covering is just a baseball cap. When I shop and live in general I went au natural I got some looks and questions but overall people were very kind. I generally wore a ball cap in and out of stores to protect my head from the sun. I am an avid football fan and enjoy a good tailgate so a ball cap was always perfect and it looked feminine and very much me.

I also learned that once you lose your hair that your head and ears get very cold at times so my favorite colder weather feather are knitted caps. I would be lying if I said I don't own probably 10. These are in my opinion blessings from above especially since many of mine came donated from churches in the area from a grab bag at my treatment center. They also are very reasonably priced and I think are a great fashion feature for guys or gals.Plus even once your hair starts growing back they can be worn with no issues.

Before I realized that I would prefer ball caps or knitted caps I bought some scarfs from the cancer shop at a near by hospital shop. There were a wide variety that I bought over time from the easy to use turban scarf that helps you put it on easily to the normal everyday scarf that I bought from Target and taught myself to tie after attending a class intended on helping ladies with cancer feel better and learn a little bit and get advice from other ladies.

My tie technique used on a Target scarf

The scarf that I bought from the hospital wellness center

Wigs are fun, they make you look more natural and in many ways can make you feel more like you, also you can have fun trying different colors and styles for yourself and not have to worry about it. First bit of advice about wigs is they are expensive so before you buy call your insurance and find out if wigs or "hair prosthesis" are covered under your insurance. You will probably be as surprised as I was to find many times they are, my insurance covered my wigs prices 90% so I paid the full price of the wig but insurance sent me a check back covering all but $13, which is much better than it could have. Second with your wig make sure you really love the cut and it makes you feel like you and looks similar to your natural look especially the roots if your hair didn't have body at the scalp go with a more flat wig. I felt especially uncomfortable in my first wig that a lot of volume up top, plus the color was a little off to me. Third play with hair colors in the shop but get something that looks natural on you and that you like and I(and my mother) think there is high importance on the highlights in the color because they make the wigs look more natural than just a solid color.

The first wig

The second

Again with wig #2

Resources that helped me
TLC Catalog from American Cancer Society This is a good resource for inexpensive options and many head covering varieties
Look Good Feel Better I never attended a meeting but I have friends who did who would recommend it
Chemoflage If you're in Atlanta I would highly recommend this

Closing thought: Not everyone is the same, cover your head to make sure you feel beautiful or handsome and don't let anyone steal your sunshine. Everyone may have their input on what they think you might like/want but YOU have the final say. Also never feel ashamed of your bald head, it is beautiful and never let someone cover it in a way you do not want it is your decision not their's because they are not fighting you are.

Rebecca

Hair Evacuation

How to handle when the hair on your head decides to leave because of chemo honestly it one of the toughest things to do early on in chemo treatments. Not all chemo makes hair fall out but it is a reality that you probably want to think about early on in treatment because it is emotional. Up to this point in my cancer journey my hair has evacuated my head twice.

June 28, 2010 I took a shower and while washing my very thick and curly hair I was brushing out gel and hair products when my brush kept filling up with hair. I usually maybe filled my brush half way up by the end of the shower and that was "normal." On the 28th I filled up my brush twice full and it would have kept coming but I stopped brushing I could not and would not deal with it that day, and at that moment I knew I had to take the bull by the horns and cut it and shave it because if I had woken up with it all on my pillow I knew my level of emotions could not handle calling my mother to come home and get me out of bed.

July 29, 2010 I had decided it was the day for it to come off. I had 10 inches of hair so I was able to donate hair to Pantene Good Lengths which was another reason I felt I needed to take the bull by the horn and cut it off because along with wanting to be in control of the loss I did not want my length to go to waste.

Here are the weekend before picture and the soon after pictures 

I am in the black before my best friend's wedding

A few days after the shave, I still had fuzz since it all hadn't fallen out

I will say I may have over reacted the first go around about my heavy shedding of hair by shaving it but honestly at that point I COULD NOT HANDLE THE EMOTIONS. I cried myself to sleep every night it seemed for a month dreading the possibility of my hair falling out on my pillow in mass one night and waking up to an empty house while my parents worked to find the shock and horror of a pillow covered and bed full of my hair. With ABVD(my first chemo regime) my hair grew back slowly but it continued to grow throughout treatments.

This was my hair 2 1/2 months after I shaved it

Now let me explain to you the second time my hair evacuated my head April, 2011. Once I started intense chemo which mandated 4 days in the hospital to receive I had been warned that my hair would fall it, it was just going to be a matter of when. This go around I decided to be passive and experience my hair falling out on its own and it was definitely an emotional roller coaster.

April 20, 2011 I left the hospital after my 2nd round of ICE chemo and my hair was definitely loose. I told my parents and my mother said to stop touching it because she didn't want it to fall out (this was a bad theory overall and I should have just shaved it but I didn't want to). April 22nd my parents left on a cruise and I had friends staying with me and keeping me company for the weekend until my brother came into town on April 24th to stay with me for the week and he was bringing his beard trimmers to take care of the hair. On April 23rd I took a shower and honestly it was worst shower of my life, my hair was so loose and apparently most had evacuated its roots by then that it was just ready to fall out. I stood in the shower and clump after clump just kept coming as I was trying to wash my hair. Thankfully I had a small plastic bag in my bathroom so I hopped out of the shower soaking wet to grab the bag and I saw myself in the mirror and broke down. I spent probably 30 minutes sitting in my shower with the water flowing and a comb filling the bag with hair and crying.  I then realized some hair was still getting down the drain so I grabbed two paper towels (we don't use hand towels for sanitary purposes) and covered the drain to try to lessen the pipe back up issues and surprisingly it worked. Again this was THE. WORST. SHOWER. EVER. My brother got to town the next afternoon and finished up with the little bit of hair that didn't come out in the shower and I was thankful when it was all gone because I felt so terrible about myself with a few chunks of hair left. It was just awful and so emotional and possibly even worse than the first hair loss. And if my hair falls out again on the chemo I start this week I really don't know how I will handle it a third time. **I also did not photo document this time period very well because of hospital time and what not**

My hair took almost 6 months to grow back after ICE chemo, a SCT, and 3 weeks of radiation. This just proves how all chemos and cancer treatments effect not only hair evacuation but hair growth. My hair has been growing faster though since October and in 4 months than it did for almost 10 after ABVD chemo so the growing back is always an interesting experience.

Hair loss is just terrible, it is so emotional. Honestly there is NO WAY to make hair loss easy I wish there was but it's difficult no matter what you do. My best advice is to deal with it how ever you want. If you want to wear wigs, wear wigs or if you want to wear a hat buy 20, if you want to flaunt your gorgeous bald head go for it, and if you want to wear scarves learn how to tie them. I will have a post on head coverings to follow this up because there are a wide varieties of things that you can do to cover your head but the key is do whatever makes you feel comfortable.

Rebecca